Tag: death

While I have previously written on the literal aspects of “how” my older sister died from cancer (with many of the roots of the disease such as mental health and diet left untouched by doctors), I’ve never really delved into the way in which she transitioned from human back to spirit…or the lesson she left for me in the process. Here is that story.

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“Call me when you are both together.”

When we got the text from our older sister, Sandi and I were both out camping and adventuring in the mountains. Blessedly, we weren’t that far apart. I was in the Holy Cross Wilderness area and didn’t receive the text until I was back to my car and had cell reception. I believe I somehow managed to suppress the thoughts and much of the anxiety I felt around the elusiveness but also known meaning around the text. Sandi wasn’t so lucky. She and her partner, Sage, were well above tree line, exploring part of the off-trail Nolan’s 14 line on Oxford and Belford, when Sandi received the text. Already crumbling with emotion, she navigated the technical line back to the trailhead as best as she could.

We met in the middle. Leadville. Right off of Hwy 24 at the Mineral Belt trailhead. Sage took Pacer’s leash from me and walked with her as Sandi and I called our older sister. Amanda, just 4 years older than us, calmly, peacefully, told us, her younger sisters, that the doctors had told her they could do no more for her cancer ridden body and that she had a limited time to live. Sandi and I simultaneously and instantaneously collapsed into a unintelligible pile of emotion and tears. Our mom, always the tough one, stoically stood by Amanda and listened to her eldest daughter tell her younger daughters that she had accepted her fate and trusted God was with her.

And there we were, all of us together, both broken and at peace.

Over the next few weeks, after Sandi, Pacer, and I drove back to Ohio to help our older sister transition, we got an up close glance and what dying looks like. In hindsight, what a strange thing…to be guides to our sister in the death process. (Amanda would later guide me on my own.)

Sometimes, Amanda was tearfully happy, especially when her closest friends or our younger cousins came to visit. Sometimes she laughed at our dinner mishaps or the mess she was leaving for us to clean up. Sometimes, she was frustrated at the bills she had left to organize and the limits of her body, while other times, she offered us grace by allowing us to help. Sometimes, Amanda was in pain. Sometimes, she cried anxious, panicky tears, like when we went over her will. Oftentimes, she asked us to hold her hand.

Sometimes, she was grouchy.

This, I want to highlight. Not all, but a lot of family members of dying loved ones have the extremely painful experience of their loved one going through a temporarily grouchy or even mean period before their death. This most acutely affected Sandi. I can’t quite remember the situation, it might just simply have been Sandi giving Amanda her medication to help with the physical pain, and Amanda uttered something like “you’re killing me”, which caused Sandi to retreat to the kitchen in tears. I can imagine that this sliced like a knife, especially when I had the same (but inaccurate) worry that I was killing my older sister with the prescribed pills from her doctor. What was really happening here to my older sister, who, just a week earlier had declared our indoor picnic lunch with our mom, stepdad, and 2 little cousins “the best day ever”?

My belief now is that this was one of the final fights from her ego, her fear-based human identity, that now faced imminent death.* (This will be the key point of the second half of this essay.) Amanda was never truly mean, grumpy, or in a bad mood throughout her life…it had only been her wounded self and the ego trying to protect her from the beauty pain of life. In these last days, Amanda’s ego knew it couldn’t survive the end of the physical body and the spiritual transformation happening within. It spoke its last words, then dissolved like the wicked witch of the West (Amanda loved the play Wicked), before Amanda surrendered and her ego disappeared forever.

_{*From my understanding, the brain can also start to malfunction near the end of life due to low oxygen, deterioration, etc. Again, this is an example of the outer reflecting the inner. Additionally, Gabor Mate explains in When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, how childhood trauma can lead to Alzheimer’s (among many other diseases), using the case study of Ronald Reagan.}

After that, I believe Amanda was already living more in the spirit world than she was here on earth. From what I have read on near death experiences (NDEs)*, her spiritual guide team was already with her and re-orienting her back to true self and Somewhere Else. On September 1st, my dad’s birthday, she mustered enough consciousness to sing him happy birthday and tell him he was the best dad ever. (This, I know, meant the world and back to my dad. He and Amanda were more alike than she would have admitted, and as so often happens with parents and children that are similar, they often butted heads.) If my memory is accurate, it was later that night, she said her last word, “yay!“, a parting gift to all of us.

_{*Recommended: Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing – Anita Moorjani}

In the wee hours of September 3rd, she quietly made her full transition from human to spirit and back to Somewhere Else. Her family and friends would no longer know her in human form.

Since then, Amanda has turned up in my and my family’s life in various ways. Roses (her middle name was “Rose”), butterflies, felt senses (a heightened gift Sandi often experiences), her favorite songs on the radio at times that could never be just coincidental, by doors creaking open (to the slight fear of my one of my younger cousins), and most recently, in a dream.

I wish I would have written it down as soon as it happened, in the still hours of darkness. I could only partially recall it back in the daylight hours. Amanda had come to me, looking young (probably around 30) and joyful, saying something like “This would have been an easier way to say goodbye”. Yet that felt odd to me at first… I already knew goodbye is only real in the earthly realm and in fact, we were now closer than we had ever been in our human armor. Now, as I write this, I think I know what she meant…she was leaving a message for all of us, for this essay, on how to die.

While I have limited experience with dream interpretation, what I believe my sister was telling me and encouraging me to write, is that it’s easier to say goodbye to our loved ones and human body when we have already dropped our ego identity and reunited with our true essence. We don’t have to put up a fight, we just surrender and allow the transformation to occur, because really, it’s an “awesome” (Amanda’s word) experience. However, I realize that sounds a little a little out of reach in just a few sentences. So instead, let me outline the stages of her death from the above description.

• Acceptance: When Amanda told Sandi and I the news, she was calm in the acceptance of her fate.
• Half & Half: I have often been told by my Reiki therapist that I am often half in, half out, or rather, half in the material (ego) world and half in the spiritual (energy) world. For Amanda, her spirit was at peace but her ego was terrified.
• Pain: Anxiety, grief, and anger, suffering, and physical pain with long periods of rest/sleep. The ego fears its own demise and often doesn’t want to go without a fight. Pain exists in the separation of our minds and true self and diminishes in unification. This step can be quite intense if the separation hasn’t yet been addressed. Grace allowed Amanda to fall asleep after these intense energetic periods.
• Surrendering: The ego simply can’t survive death or the call of a spirit back Home. Amanda’s human identity ceased to exist, although her body allowed for one more step…
• Joy: “YAY!” (The soul celebrating freedom.)
• Physical Death & Return to Spirit.
• Peace.

If I’m being completely honest, the ego death I’ve been experiencing over the past several years has been just as messy (if not much more) and emotionally painful. Without really realizing it, I fought my ego death, hard. My ego is especially tricky and manipulative (hence why I was able to date a covert narcissist for 3 years) and my fear was subtle, at least from my conditioned human perspective. In time, I allowed myself to be unravelled and stripped from identity, a process that was extremely uncomfortable (to say the least). Really, it was my only choice. It was either that, physical death, or returning to live by my ego, which would have killed me anyway. Slowly, I began to see how my mind and fear (often around not being enough) were in control of my decision making and how I went about creating my life. Yet that is a story for another day. For now, let me tell you how to die (while still alive), starting with some clarification of the ego and the “dark night of the ego”.

What is The Ego?

The ego is our human identity, often created from a foundation of fear. When explaining the ego to others, I usually just call it our “fear-based mind”. The tricky thing about the ego is we often don’t realize we have one, saving it only for those we call “egotistical”. Yet the ego lies on the spectrum of believing one is not enough, from martyr to narcissist, and can present in various ways. In actuality, when one is identifying with their human self and all of its fallibilities and success, they are believing in a false self. For this reason, I have even called our human self our shadow self, for it hides our true identity. That being said, neither our ego or our human self are bad. A healthy ego is the realization that we are human and keeps us safe from physical harm (Ex. Fire is warm, but bad to touch). It is also of upmost importance that we love our human selves and the life we’ve been given… in playing out various identities, we are healing past wounds so our soul can evolve. It is also in physical form that we can create in the material world and allow for all kinds of magical experiences.

How is the Ego Formed?

The ego begins forming sometime in childhood, once the brain has had some time to develop and the mind can start creating meaning and stories. Yet at birth, we are all simply sensory beings. Some babies cry a lot, I think because they are feeling the stark contrast of being in the realms of heaven, in the cocoon of a mother’s womb, and then squeezed out into a world of various energies being swirled around. All babies, however, are generally curious. It’s like they were just plopped down here in this weird place and have no conditioning telling them what to think, expect, or who they should be. They’ve got joy still in them too, laughing at sweet nothings. These are all general statements and other factors play in, such as the well-being of the mother and father during pregnancy, past life imprints, and overall sensitivities. What really matters, however, is the story a child tells themself about the sensations in their body after core needs (yes, food and shelter, but mainly, connection and love) have gone unmet, or rather, the heart has be invalidated. It is these stories that the ego is formed from, and it usually begins with feelings of unworthiness. Sadly, our society has been built off of conditional love which creates the world’s deadliest weapon: fear. So instead of minds growing from the fertile of soil unconditional love, most minds grow in the barren desert of the subtle and not so subtle tyrannical rulership of fear.

The ego can also carry unhealed wounds from past lives. This is what I call “karma”. Yet regardless if the wounds are from this life or a previous life, we have the opportunity to heal all wounds once we start to un-identify from the ego. How I see it is that we live a chunk of our lives forming and perhaps strengthening the ego (historically, this has been until death or midlife), and the next chunk of our lives unravelling ourselves from it. If we can do this before physical death, well… I’m excited to see what happens.

The Dark Night of the Ego (Ego Death)

I want to start out by saying (writing) that the dark night of the ego and hitting rock bottom are two different things. Hitting rock bottom is relatively quick. It is the night on the bathroom floor after drinking too much, the life-altering diagnosis, the end of a romantic relationship, or that first time you make a decision with the heart rather than the head (ego). It is what I call “the crack” that leads to the dark night of the ego (others refer to this as the dark night of the soul, but I see the soul rejoicing when this happens). The dark night of the ego, on the other hand, is usually a several month to several year long process (there are, of course, exceptions), where, layer by layer, the ego-identity is unravelled until we get closer or even back home to our true selves. For many who have undergone this kind of spiritual awakening, the process has been painful. Yet I think this is going to be less so in the coming years, for many light workers have walked the “path of darkness” to leave a light for others to follow. (I first read and appreciated this phrasing in a Mary Magdalen book, describing Jesus’s death.)

How to Die (While Still Alive)

When the ego becomes our identity and is based off of fear, it limits the beauty of life and the potential of our souls to heal, create, and love. When we allow our ego to die, at least the fear-based part, we actually get to experience what it means to be free while in human form. True freedom, I have learned (the hard way), is of and from the mind rather than something gained by material wealth or by experiences manifested from a place of lack. Transcending the ego means moving from a place of pain (hell) to a place of joy (heaven). It allows our hearts to lead over the ego-mind, giving the steering wheel back to our soul’s and the ability to live from a place of peace, despite life’s circumstances.

But how do we do it? And is it possible to do it now without experiencing tremendous amounts of pain?

Yes…and/but, if you’ve numbed from the emotions in your body throughout your life in any way (and this is especially true for empaths), there is probably going to be a lot of energy moving through that may or may not come in the form of emotional, mental, or even physical pain (backache, throwing up, injury, etc). Fortunately, I believe that the need to experience pain is going to be less and less true for future generations as more parents, and the world, becomes more emotionally and spiritually intelligent. Plus, if you haven’t yet noticed, a large chunk of the current generation of kids are already coming in way more conscious (and energetically sensitive) than previous generations…they’ve got great bullshit-o-meters and have little tolerance for conventional norms.

Ok, with that caveat, the steps on how let go of the ego:

1. Be disobedient to the (lower/ego) mind*.
   All those thoughts in your head, you don’t have to listen to them, and you certainly don’t have to follow them. Call out the fear-based stories and the conditions that have been given to you. Choose to see through the illusion of the mind. Choose to see things from another perspective. Choose to see through the lens of love.
   *I added lower mind because this line is paraphrased from The Gospel of Mary. When “mind” is used in that text, it is not talking about the ego mind but the “higher mind”, which I believe refers to true, unified consciousness (what some might call “God”).
   
   Extra: Starve the ego
   You may or may not experience “the crack”, either because you don’t have to on your journey or you choose to intentionally “starve the ego”, simply meaning, you don’t give it what it wants. This is in part not listening to it, but is a slightly more intentional experience of rewiring your brain’s reward system, meaning denying the brain the normal ways it seeks out dopamine hits, be it seeking out validation through big accomplishments or simply checking how many likes you received on your latest social media post. In the past, many spiritual teachers have done this by both living as a hermit and starving themselves (which could be a reward system for those with eating disorders). Very few have actually received enlightenment that way, and I believe the work now (especially for those of us who would prefer to be hermits) is to stay in relationship with the others.
   
   Be prepared for the ego to “flip the fuck out”(the profession phrase I often use with my clients doing ego work). And for those who have dated narcissists, double check for your own inner narcissist trying to manipulate your process. Remember, the ego fears its own death and will kick and scream its way out. Love that, too.
   
   
2. Breathe: quiet the mind.
   Some options include: meditation, play, dancing, creating art, walking in nature. Anything that turns down the volume of the mind or allows you to turn it off altogether. Pay attention to your breath…it is, after all, what makes you alive and able to live beyond the shadows.
   
   
3. Love fiercely.
   The ego is made up of fear, and the only thing fear cannot survive is love. My suggestion here is to consciously throw all the love you have at the fear-based stories in your mind, all your wounds, all your pain. When these things start to surface, see them, feel them, and love them. Call on the Divine Feminine for help. Love yourself through what you would call mistakes or sins and the times you were invalidated as a child, when your parents weren’t or didn’t know how to be there for you. Love yourself through the stories of “not enoughness”. Remind yourself that any story other than one of love and inherent worth is untrue. This is in part what therapists would call “re-parenting work”, but with even more clear (higher) seeing and love.
   
   During my own journey, there were times when I “woke up fighting”, meaning my anxiety and fear-based thoughts would start as soon as I opened my eyes I’d have to immediately chose not to believe the fear, and, after praying for help to see with clarity and through the lens of love, I’d end up repeating “I love you. You are enough.”
   
   
4. Listen to the heart and body.
   This often feels like a foreign concept, even….especially for people in the athletic world who have learned to overrule the body’s signals. It’s even more foreign for empaths who learned that feeling was unsafe and built up layers of armor. However, listening to the heart and body is completely innate. Many of us may just have to deconstruct to get there.
   
   If you have any aches or pains, you can start by feeling and breathing into them and asking the area “what message do you have for me?”. You can also practice breathing into the heart, taking 3-5 deep breaths and focusing on your heart center. Practice feeling your emotions. If they don’t move (think of a passing cloud) in a minute or two, get curious if you have a block that is not allowing the emotion to pass, or if there’s just a lot more in there from suppressing emotions for so long. (Note that thoughts can keep emotions stuck.) If you have a block, feel into why its there and/or how it is protecting you. Underneath emotions are sensations, the gut feelings. The contraction and expansion. Notice when your heart energy feels like it is getting bigger or growing smaller. Your heart will be one of your greatest guides. Be patient…if you have a lot of blocks or emotions that need to be experienced in the body, you may not be able to access these sensations for awhile. Keeping going. This leads us to our last step…
   
   
5. Trust the timing of the Universe (ask for guidance and reassurance when you need it)
   
   You may experience situations during this time that you want to deem as unfavorable, but really, these experiences are just showing you how the ego is still in charge and what needs healing. From a “higher” perspective, it’s truly “all good”. Along your death journey, ask for guidance and support from your spirit guide team, be it angels, deceased loved ones, ascended souls, animals, etc. Notice who or what shows up in your life. Maybe you find a teacher, therapist, or friend, or maybe the right book or podcast appears holding just the information you were seeking. You may ask for signs that you’re on the right path, and look for synchronicities (like angel numbers). Most importantly, and once again, be patient. In a human body, it’s usually impossible to see the intricacies of life and how we affect one another, or one situation (no matter how small) is the catalyst for something else. Remember that saying “love is patient”? That’s true. That is trust. Only fear is ever in a rush. The peace and healing you are seeking will come as long as you hold the intention in your heart. Even though the path may be unclear, all you have to do is follow the breadcrumbs and keep putting one foot in front of the other. As Rumi said, “As you start to walk the way, the way appears.”

Extra exercises to support you on your journey to the underworld:

1. Sit with The Trees
Trees know how to die. Each Autumn, they die externally as their leaves and needles fall to earth. They just. let. go. Softly and gracefully. This is because trees don’t carry the weight or anxiety of the human ego. And, while our surrendering may not be so graceful, what we can do is notice each thought as it comes up, realize it is not us, exhale and relax the body, and imagine allowing the thought to fall away. This is, in fact, meditation. Tree energy can help support us in this process, especially during the fall and winter, so this is a great practice to take outside.

2. Newborn
When you wake up in the morning, pretend you were just plopped down here. You have no prior conditioning. No expectations. Just be curious about the strange, beautiful world you are in.

3. Free-write
Free-writing has literally been a god-send to me, as it connects me to my higher self and guide team. In your journal, head the page by writing something like “Spirit, what messages do you have for me today?” and then just let your pen flow, doing your best to avoid conscious thought. Some people find it helpful to write with their opposite hand. The messages may be super simple (and very needed) at first. As you get more familiar with the process, you’ll find it easier to ask specific questions as well.

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Don’t like who you think you are?

You are not who you think you are.

Don’t like your body?

You won’t have it for long, so love it for the ride it’s taking you on.

Want to crawl out of your skin?

Break open. Feel. it. all.

Are you on a path you despise?

Turn towards the unknown.

The totality of who you are cannot be stated by thought. Your soul cannot be confined by the constraints of the ego. In order to know yourself, you must die unto yourself. Only in death can you experience the entirety of yourself. You are infinite. You are Love.